


Life Like Unicorns

by damalur



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-21
Updated: 2011-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At some point in the last decade, Santana learned to play nice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Like Unicorns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betternovembers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betternovembers/gifts).



> For Juniperlane, who graciously donated over at [Write for Relief](http://allthingsholy.livejournal.com/147648.html) in exchange for Santana futurefic. This would be a lesser story without the sharp eyes of Odyle, who corralled my commas and did her best to talk me out of my bad compositional decisions. (I feel like I should mention _Better Off Ted_ 's Veronica Palmer, who was in my head as I wrote Santana. One seems like an evolution of the other, and stuff in my head totally makes sense.)

Life isn't always so perfect. Some evenings Santana comes home to a girlfriend laid up on the couch with ice packs on every joint in her body, or to no girlfriend at all; some evenings she's so geared up she has to pound out seven or eight miles on the treadmill before she can even think about interacting with another human being on equal ground, and some evenings she's so exhausted that she strips out of her suit and sprawls across the bed without even removing her make-up.

Today, though, the apartment smells of fresh lime and vanilla, the three goldfish in the tank all appear to be alive, and there's a hot blonde dancer baking cookie-cake in her kitchen. Today is a good day.

(The goldfish come and go with the seasons. Santana presides over a service for every single damn dead fish even though she cares about pets this amount: 0. Bottom line is that the funerals make Brittany feel better, so Brittany gets a fish funeral even if it's three in the morning and Santana feels like her nipples have frostbite.)

"Hey, babe," Santana says.

"Hi, Santana," Brittany sing-songs. "Yellow icing or green icing?"

Santana takes off her white suit jacket and hangs it on the back of a barstool before sticking a finger into the open container of yellow frosting. "Mm," she says, "why not both?"

"I could draw sunflowers? They never come out as nice as the giant cookies at the bakery, though."

"Pretty sure those losers go to school to be able to do that," Santana says. "Maybe if your knee doesn't recover well enough to—"

But Brittany's whole face—her entire _body_ —crumples. (Of course it does, even her _toes_ are expressive; they wiggle when she's excited and curl under when she's sad.) Part of Santana wants to slap Brittany for being so sensitive and part of her wants to slap herself and she knows which part has to win. Three years ago, when they moved in together, Santana promised she'd leave the corporate cut-throat at the office. This time she wasn't even being mean, just stupid and careless.

"Hey, Brit, hey," she says, and combs her fingers through Brittany's thick, straight hair. "I didn't mean it, you know that, right?"

Brittany leans into her and closes her eyes. "I know, but what if..."

"Then we'll find better doctors and throw more money at the problem," Santana says.

"What if we run out of money or the doctors hate dancing like in that one movie?"

"First, we are never gonna run out of money. Definitely not for this, okay? Also, I'm pretty sure that John Lithgow is dead, so he can't terrorize anyone into hating you." (She will never, ever understand that nightmare.) "And if everything else fails, sweetheart, we'll put out a hit on Beyoncé and graft one of her legs onto you."

"She's old," Brittany complains, but without any heat—she still worships Beyoncé. "Would I be multi-generational?"

"Babe, you'd be a medical miracle," Santana promises.

-

Santana doesn't subscribe to the Campsite Rule. Leave 'em better than you found 'em, hell no, you leave them wanting more. It's a model of behavior that previously served her well, from the boyfriends she had in high school to the girlfriends she had in college. Santana is aware that she rides the line between hardass and out-of-control, that enough liquor or too many emotions make her over into an angry, weeping mess. She likes acting from a position of power. Brittany makes that difficult.

Because: being mean to Brittany is like tearing out her own hair—pointless, painful, and unbeautiful. Santana is left the one wanting more, the one who always _wants_ , which was horrible and humiliating and sat like a hot stone of shame in her stomach until she resigned herself to being in love.

-

If this is a love story, though, it's a fucking retarded one. Santana has always thought so.

-

The tonal shifts alone would be enough to kill the story on film. Act One was a melodrama, maybe a soap opera, big declarations and backstabbing and alliances and conflictconflictconflict. Santana wasn't even billed as a star and it still seems like she fell in love twice a day and had sex more often than that. Act One was a musical, all flash, the plot discarded in favor of ballads and show tunes, and Act Two was a coming-of-age drama peppered with still more sex—nothing like moving out of a conservative home for a burgeoning lesbian's love life. That was college, when Santana didn't see or hear from Brittany for a solid five years. It was good for her. It was good for them both. Santana learned how to be less bitchy and less desperate, and Brittany learned to enjoy making decisions for herself.

Act Three is the dullest resolution that never saw print. It involves power suits (bespoke), an apartment (color scheme selected jointly), a widening circle of friends (among them roommates Kurt Hummel and Rachel Berry), and a series of still general discussions about children (Santana likes the name 'Portia,' Brittany favors Coach Sylvester as a godmother).

"What if Beyoncé is abducted by pirates and they chop her legs off and she can't dance at all anymore?" Brittany asks, her spine a sweet curve under Satana's palm; in heels, Santana can just begin to rival Brittany's height.

"Please," Satana says. "Beyoncé is a diva for life whether she can dance or not. You think her friends are going to abandon her just because she can't twirl around like a ballerina?"

"What if a dragon tries to eat her?"

"I'll get Legal to draft a restraining order," Santana says. "And if the dragon thinks he's above the law, I'll kill him myself."

Brittany curls even closer. Santana can smell flour and the pleasantly simple scent of hypoallergenic shampoo in her silky, corn-colored hair.

Brittany says, voice barely above a whisper, "What if the surgery really doesn't work?"

"Then you'll be an actress," Santana says. "Or an entrepreneur, or a writer, or a teacher. You could join the circus and train elephants. You can do whatever you want. Shit, you could be my housewife," she adds, and only then does the tension unravel from Brittany's shoulders.

"I do know how to bake," Brittany declares, and uses her grip on Santana's hips to shuffle them in a slow waltz toward the pantry. "Do we have any pink?"

"Icing or nailpolish?" Santana asks.

"Can you put nailpolish on cake?"

"Not if you want to eat it."

"I want to draw a unicorn on the cookie-cake," Brittany says. "Then we can have it for dinner."

"I thawed salmon," Santana tries to protest.

"I converted, I'm a vegetarian now," Brittany says, and gives Santana an eyeful when she reaches for a top shelf. "Also we can watch a movie and paint our toes."

"What?" Santana says. "Nevermind, don't explain, I'll eat the salmon for lunch tomorrow."

Brittany beams and starts to eat pink frosting by the spoonful.

-

Later that night, Santana rolls over in bed to look at Brittany. "You know vegetarianism isn't a religion, right?"

"Don't be stupid," Brittany says, and goes back to sleep.


End file.
